From the origins of shred

During the 1950s, the now-prolific Jim Phillips designed the Screaming Hand image, which later in 1985 became the instantly recognisable logo for the well-known Santa Cruz Skateboards company. With impeccable attention to scale and detail, LEGO builder Brick Flag brings this true icon of skateboarding culture to the Brick. As a builder with a history of skateboarding, I too have attempted to build this gnarly skate totem, though with much less success than this great representation. The colour scheme for such a depiction is pretty unavoidable, though the dark azure is utterly prefect for such a build. The part selection has been superbly chosen considering the limited piece pallet available.

Screaming Hand

The Screaming Hand has represented hardcore skaters practically the world over for around 35 years, and this LEGO creation has done it justice in many ways. Before we go into its details, take a moment to observe the similarities when held against the original. The shaping has been achieved beautifully, considering the form and function of the human hand. Yet the I can still hear a ripple through the readers/builder at home, lamenting the colour selection for the ball joint and socket modified plates, which are sadly only produced in greys.

Screaming Hand

The bold mouth in the center of the palm has been well designed, including the tongue, though the sections that really get me are the lips and the base of the palm. The shaping and roundness here, due to the triple curved wedges, is brilliant and adds so much of the expression found in the original. Unlike the original illustration though, this version has some magnificent articulation, giving it the ability to pull some straight-up tubular gestures. The finger construction owes its flexibility not just to the ball joints but also to the inverted and curved slopes, giving each digit an anatomically realistic ability.

Screaming Hand

The shredded wrist keeps its true form to the original, with its blood spraying open wound. The brutality of such an image is an excellent representation of the feeling when you get when you hit the ground at speed and Brick Flag’s duplicate leaves nothing hidden. The use of red dinosaur necks and tails, as well as various horns is a tasteful design choice, giving it the raw, artery pumping feeling it deserves.

Screaming Hand

This homage to Jim Phillips and skate culture is stunning and I am personally stoked to see this achieved in such a great way. Be sure to also check out Brick Flag’s awesome tribute to the Beastie Boys: Licenced to MOC.

4 comments on “From the origins of shred

  1. Chris Vesque aka Brick Flag

    Ben Andrews, thanks for sharing my build and the greatly detailed write up. I’m totally flattered, much appreciated!

  2. Purple Dave

    “Yet the I can still hear a ripple through the readers/builder at home, lamenting the colour selection for the ball joint and socket modified plates, which are sadly only produced in greys.”

    Meh. To date, there are five ball/socket elements that were specifically created as Mixel joints. All five come in dark-bley, thanks to Disney/Marvel objecting to the use of light-bley on Giant-man. Currently, you can’t get the full set in any other color. In this case, it’s rather fortunate that dark-bley has a tone that’s close enough to blue that they sorta blend in. When doing ball-jointed construction, that can be a real problem with a lot of lighter or darker colors. Obviously, if you want to do Mixel-jointed construction and you can’t adequately hide the ball joint elements, dark-bley is the optimal color to work with, but blue works out pretty well, too.

    Now, there are also click-hinges, which do come in blue, but pulling off that range of motion might be impossible with hinges vs. ball joints. What _is_ distracting is the white stand in that last photo, on a very dark background. Since all of the other photos were shot on white, I’m guessing that was done purposefully just to show how the stand works with the hand.

  3. Ben Andrews Post author

    Your very welcome Chris, was great to write about that collides two of my worlds! thanks for highlighting an incredible icon in the skating and art scenes.

    And thank you PD, your constructive insight was appreciated. The use of the part itself was great, i was only commenting on the idea that maybe a broader colour range for the ball joint and socket parts, may be a valuable addition to any builders shelf.

  4. Purple Dave

    @Ben:
    Hey, you’ll get no argument from me on the benefits of a wider color range. And many colors really do look bad with dark-bley Mixel joints (try making them blend in to white). But to be fair, even dark-bley works better with a wide range of colors than if they’d produced it in a bright color like blue (looking right at you, friction axle-pin…says the guy who still has ~100 unopened Bohrok Va sets squirreled away just because they each come with 3x black friction axle-pins). This just happens to be one instance when the color mismatch is much less noticeable, and not particularly jarring to the eye (though even 15 years later, I still feel that LEGO blue is too warm to really look great with dark-bley).

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